


Daybreak

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [42]
Category: Night World - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witches, Crossover, Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7623286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Rodney McKay, “Back off, man. I’m a scientist.” (Ghostbusters)"</p><p>In which Rodney begins to implement his plan</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daybreak

For all that Rodney had spent the last four and a half years in another galaxy fighting off life-sucking vampires and another few years before that combating the Goa’uld, he’d really underestimated his own relative safety in both those situations. Sure, Atlantis had some of the other strange perils Earth did - vampires (okay, one, and only half at that), witches (one and a half official ones, a bunch of unintended ones, most of which were in the form of Marines), and shapeshifters (two of them, usually too busy making eyes at each other to be dangerous, but now possibly starting some kind of secession/rebellion on another planet). What Atlantis didn’t have was the seedy side of Las Vegas populated by criminals, desperate drug addicts, desperate homeless people, gangs, pimps, and one really angry-looking werewolf, all of which Rodney was supposed to brave alone and unarmed.  
  
He’d tried posing as the uncle of a teenage girl who’d been sucked into a goth vampire cult, but that had yielded no information for finding actual vampires. So he’d donned his black leather Atlantis jacket and headed out to the goth clubs again, this time posing as a scientist looking to prove the existence of vampires and possibly bottle vampirism so raccoon-eyed teenage girls could live out their _Twilight_ fantasies in pale, sunless glory. A few inquiries and terrible abuses of scientific theory later and a group of teenage girls led him to the back of a club called Midnight Sun to meet a boy they swore was a vampire.  
  
He looked all of eighteen years old, was very short, and had coal-black eyes and coal-black hair and had gone to great lengths to paint himself up to look pale.  
  
His name was Quinn, he said, and he might know where to find some real vampires.  
  
“I mean the real kind,” Rodney said. “With black irises and black roses.”  
  
Quinn, Rodney noted, was wearing a t-shirt with a black rose on it. Rodney had seen t-shirts like that before, only Carson’s had had a black dahlia and Lorne’s had had a black lily.  
  
Quinn stepped closer, and his eyes blazed silver. “Who taught you about the black bouquet?”  
  
“I - heard. From a friend. Who wears a black dahlia. He said that I might be a, er, black violet.” And wow, this sounded like a terrible line from a terrible spy movie.  
  
“This friend?”  
  
“Wishes to remain anonymous in case I’m not actually a black violet.” If either John or Carson found out how Rodney was spending his annual leave (at a conference, they thought, while John got two weeks’ stand-down but wasn’t allowed out of Teldy’s sight till Rodney got back), they’d kill him.  
  
Quinn’s eyes remained pure silver, which Rodney knew meant Quinn was in full-on vampire-with-fangs mode, but he didn’t bare his teeth. Instead he rattled off an address, which Rodney memorized, and dismissed Rodney with a flick of his wrist.  
  
And now Rodney was standing outside a door spray-painted with a black dahlia but with a boy who was clearly a werewolf guarding it. If the black foxglove on his shirt hadn’t been a dead giveaway, the fangs and claws and ears and tail and fur-fur-fur would have done the trick.  
  
The boy snarled at him, and he sounded like an actual wolf, not just a kid imitating a wolf.  
  
Rodney summoned all the courage he could muster. “Back off, man! I’m a scientist.”  
  
The werewolf snarled at him again.  
  
Rodney, panicked, desperately wished he’d mastered witchfire before he’d left the city, but no one had it yet (no one but John, and he hadn’t told anyone that fact, no one but Rodney). And then the kid’s sleeve caught on fire and he uttered a pained yelp and the door flew open and a pretty blonde woman spilled into the alley.  
  
“I’m sorry!” Rodney cried, horrified. “I didn’t mean to - I’m terribly new at this whole -”  
  
“Stop, drop, and roll, Kurt!” the woman cried.  
  
And the werewolf - who really was just a boy - hit the ground and rolled around like a maniac.

When the flames were out, the woman hauled Kurt - whimpering and sobbing - to his feet. She glared at Rodney.  
  
“What the hell were you thinking?”  
  
“That he might eat me and I really wish I’d mastered witchfire before venturing down this alley alone tonight?” Rodney said meekly. “I’m really sorry,” he added to the boy, who had no idea how rare an actual apology from Rodney McKay was.  
  
“You should be,” the woman snapped. “Have you no control?”  
  
“Er, no? Like I explained to that vampire boy, Quinn, I’m sort of...new at this.”  
  
“Quinn sent you?” The woman pushed Kurt inside the building, which was pounding with music. It was a dance club and a bar. Of course.  
  
“Yes. I asked, and he gave me this address.”  
  
“You...asked?”  
  
“Well, I told him a friend of mine sent me, a witch. Who thinks I might be a lost witch.”  
  
“Very lost, judging by your poor magical skills,” the woman said. But she sighed. “You’re in the right place, though, to find a tutor.” She looked Rodney up and down. “You’re coming into your power rather late in life.”  
  
“I’m not that old,” Rodney snapped. The woman looked to be about the same age as him. Or - no. Maybe only in her twenties? Or perhaps older. The wisdom in her warm brown eyes was - ageless.  
  
“I meant no insult,” the woman said. “It’s just - usually adolescence triggers power. The stress of it all.”  
  
“I do work a very stressful job these days,” Rodney said, not that his adolescence hadn't been one long stress-fest. The woman guided him into the club, and they skirted the edge of the dance floor where seemingly a bunch of teenagers were having the time of their lives, but Rodney saw the silver in their eyes, the inhuman grace of their bodies, and knew most of them weren’t really teenagers.  
  
The woman led him into a back room that was quieter, where people - mostly women, but a few men - were sitting around sipping drinks, conversing quietly, a couple of people even reading.  
  
“Now,” the woman said, “what’s your name, cousin?”  
  
“My name is Rodney McKay,” he said, “and I’m looking for Thea Harman.”  
  
The woman stared at him for a long time. Then she swallowed hard. “What happened to Evan?”  
  
It took Rodney a moment to realize. “You’re Thea?”  
  
“Evan hasn’t sent me an email in weeks. Wouldn’t someone from the Air Force have been dispatched if he was MIA or KIA or whatever they call it? And they’d have sent someone to his mother, not me. I’m not his next of kin.” Thea’s eyes were no longer warm, were wary.  
  
“It’s complicated,” Rodney began.  
  
“Evan told me you’re John’s soulmate. He didn’t tell me you were a lost witch.”  
  
“I need your help,” Rodney said.  
  
“To learn witchfire? I already emailed Evan everything I know. Unless something happened to him before he could tell you?” Thea searched his gaze.  
  
Rodney shook his head, leaned in and lowered his voice, though he wondered how effective that would be, given how some of the people in the room were wearing black iris and rose and lily shirts. “Look, Evan can use magic.”  
  
“Impossible.”  
  
“I saw him do it. John was trying to teach me to light a candle, to start with small magic before I moved on to witchfire, and I couldn’t do it, and Evan could.”  
  
Thea’s face went pale. “No. Evan is Forsaken. Did he - did he kill himself?”  
  
“He didn’t have a chance to try. John freaked out and stabbed him with a silver letter opener, and then John had Evan and Ronon thrown in the brig -”  
  
“Ronon?”  
  
“Evan’s boyfriend. Also a shapeshifter.”  
  
Thea’s brow furrowed. “Evan never told me his name. Ronon what?”  
  
“Dex.”  
  
“I’m unfamiliar with that clan.”  
  
Rodney winced. “Like I said, it’s complicated. Anyway, Ronon and Evan got let out of the brig, John got thrown in the brig, and then Evan and Ronon went AWOL, and now apparently they’re maybe sort of starting their own rebellion. Well, I don’t think they are, but John does, and he’s in full-on vamp mode, and I’m terrified that he’s going to sneak away and try to fight them and so many people will die and -”  
  
Thea reached out, put a hand on Rodney’s, sending him grinding to a halt. “Take a deep breath, Rodney. We can help you.”  
  
“We?” Rodney asked.  
  
“Circle Daybreak.”


End file.
